Lady Hamilton as a Sibyl

Lady Hamilton as a Sibyl from 1791 represents Vigée Le Brun’s fascination with Emma Hamilton during her Neapolitan exile. Hamilton’s classical attitudes—living tableaux that recreated poses from ancient art—were a sensation among European visitors to Naples, and Vigée Le Brun painted several versions of her in prophetic and mythological guises. Vigée Le Brun was the most technically accomplished and socially successful woman painter of the eighteenth century, achieving membership of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783 and a clientele that extended from the French royal family to the courts of Russia, Austria, and Italy during her decade of exile following the Revolution. Her portrait manner combined the neoclassical formal values of her training with a quality of feminine intimacy and emotional warmth that made her portraits of women and children especially celebrated. Her ability to make her sitters appear simultaneously dignified and approachable was the technical foundation of her social success.

The sibylline costume of flowing white drapery creates sculptural effects that Vigée Le Brun renders with fluid brushwork. The upward gaze and dramatic pose convey prophetic inspiration in the theatrical style Hamilton cultivated.